Even Liberal Bubbles Don’t Feel As Safe As They Used To

There’s been a lot of talk over the past week and a half about the rise in hate crimes since Donald Trump was elected president. The Southern Poverty Law Center announced that it received an alarming 437 reports of such incidents between November 9 and November 14. And those numbers don’t seem to be getting better.

People have been responding to the uptick in these attacks in a variety of ways. A growing number of Californians, for instance, have been talking about seceding from the nation. Now, we hate to burst your bubble California, but you’re not immune to bigotry or violence. Hilda Solis, a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, said this week that she’s seen noticable increase in reports of “acts of hate, harassment and bullying throughout the county” since last week’s election.

Other liberal enclaves have also seen an uptick in antigay attacks, including both New York and San Francisco. In fact, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo just launched a hate crime hotline after increased reports of racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic acts in the Empire State.

The takeaway from this is pretty obvious: Hate exists everywhere. Not just in rural communities, the Deep South, or strange pockets of Middle America. It’s thriving in our nation’s biggest and most progressive cities, and the sooner we can accept this, rather than pretend like it’s not a problem where we live, the sooner we can try to fix it.

Here are just a few hate crimes that have happened in “liberal” cities across the country since Trump was elected…

Santa Cruz, CA

A UC Santa Cruz student was assaulted by three men on Friday, November 11 “because of [her] actual or perceived gender and sexuality,” school officials said. The men harassed the woman then struck her in the head with a rock as she was walking to her dorm. Paramedics treated her for minor injuries and a police report was filed.

New York, NY

State Sen. Brad Hoylman, an openly gay Democratic lawmaker from New York, says he walked out of his apartment to find someone had carved a swastika into the side of the Greenwich Village apartment he shares with his husband and daughter. An investigation is underway.

Despite living in a county and a state that voted for Hillary Clinton, two days after last week’s election, John Kraus, a student at Washington State University, found his car grafitied in anti-gay slurs.

“I think people have always felt this way,” Kraus, who filed a police report, told his student paper. “It’s always been around, it’s always existed. Trump just gave a way for people to normalize it and make it acceptable to be discriminatory toward people.”

Denver, CO

Earlier this week, a Colorado trans woman had her car spray painted with the words “Fag,” “He She,” “Tranny,” and “Die.” Denver police are currently investigating.